Saturday 15 December 2012

A stop-press on the post I was part-way through writing.

The hearts of Gisèle, my partner and myself are broken, and united with our friends in America today following the appalling and mindless slaughter at Sandy Hook Primary School in Connecticut.

The stolen lives of the innocent babes and those who loved and cared for them reduces me to disbelieving incomprehension.  There are no words - no barks - of balm that I can offer.  Our love and prayers are with you.

The massacre of the innocents will never be forgotten by anyone in the right-thinking world.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead,

Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Funeral Blues, by W.H. Auden